Voting behaviour and Participation

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  • Voting Behaviour and Participation
    • Recency factors
      • Dominant Ideology Model
        • voters influenced by ideology of powerful elites by role in things like mass media
        • Mass media
          • Big influence
            • Conservative party backed by major newspapers - Sun, Daily Mail and telegraph and received 36.9% of vote, whereas UKIP backed by onetime Daily Star and received 12.6% of vote
          • Little influence
            • Reinforcement theory : the media only reflects what the public already believes
              • Conservative party despite being backed by major newspapers did't gain lot of support from 2010 - 2015, 2010 they received 36.1% of the vote and in 2015 they got 36.9%
      • Voting Context Model
        • voters behaviour varies depending on type of election
          • By-electtion
            • Traditionally, by-elections act as an opportunity for constituents to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the sitting government 
          • Electoral system used
            • If a more proportional system is used then voters more likely to vote for preferred party as last chance of wasted vote
              • 2014 European Parliament election uses party list ad UKIP won
      • Rational Choice Model
        • Voters  evaluate parties and vote o a range of factors like party policies and reputation
    • Primacy Factors
      • Class
        • 45% of middle class voters voted Conservative in 2015 General Election
      • Gender
        • Women typically voted Conservatives u until the 1950s
          • However in the 2015 General election 37% of men voted Conservative and 38% of women did so though women is still bigger there isn't a huge difference
      • Ethnicity
        • 80% of Caribbean voters voted Labour in 2015 General Election
      • Age
        • Older voters tend to vote for more right wing policies and parties, younger voters are far more equalitarian
      • Class dealignment?
        • There has been class dealignment
          • Social Mobility
            • embourgeoisement
              • as working class become more middle class economically as does their voting behaviour
                • Labour support from skilled working class in 1997 was 50% in 2010 it dropped drastically to 29%
          • Party Policy
            • 1980s Margaret Thatcher
              • Right to Buy Scheme
            • 1990s Tony Blair
              • tried to appeal to middle class voters and business leaders
                • Middle class support for Labour Party in 1974 was 19% however this increased to 34% in 1997
            • David Cameron 2015 - promised to remove over one million middle class families from 40p ta x bracket
        • There hasn't been class dealignment
          • 2015 General Election
            • Labour
              • D and E Voters - 41% voted Labour
              • North East support - 46.9% voted Labour
            • Conservative
              • 45% of middle class voters supported Conservatives
    • Participation crisis?
      • There is a participation crisis because
        • Low turnout
          • thretens the governments legitmacyand questions mandate
            • In 2015 General Election, the Conservative party won 36.9% of the vote. Although there was only a 66.1% turnout so only 24.4% of the electorate actually voted for the Conservatives
        • Decline in party membership
          • In 2015 only 30% of the public 'strongly supported' a political party
          • only 1% of the electorate2015 was a member of the 3 main political parties
      • There isn't a participation crisis because
        • there are other forms of political participation
          • Pressure Groups - RSPB has more members than the 3 main politial parties combined and doubled
          • E-democracy: petitions are popular ad from 2011-2015 over 150 e-petitions were signed by 10,000 signatures
        • Differential turnout : varying levelspf turnout across the country, the national average masks this, in Dunbarton East there was 81.9% turnout and in the age bracket 65+ there was 75% turnout

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